ATHENS – A little-used new law aimed at preventing the spread of misinformation about the waning COVID-19 pandemic will find the Abbot and five monks of a monastery on Mount Pelio on trial on charges of doing that.

According to the indictment, said Kathimerini, in January this year they distributed a pocket diary titled “Think before you get vaccinated,” urging people not to be inoculated against the Coronavirus.

They backed it up, the report said, with dubious statements from doctors and a lawyer in the anti-vaxxer movement of people not required to be vaccinated against COVID even as it was spreading fast earlier.

“The great bitterness is that the leadership of the Church, Archbishops – Metropolitans – reached the point of recommending the vaccine from the pulpit, as a tool to brainwash the faithful,” a quote from the calendar read.

Legal authorities in Volos opened a preliminary investigation which resulted in the indictments although the publisher of the calendar, identified by media there as the Monastery of Megisti Lavra in Mount Athos wasn’t prosecuted although the new law allows that.

The date of the trial is expected to be determined soon, state-run broadcaster ERT said, ironically coming as the New Democracy government essentially lifted most health restrictions.